Firebelly Productions takes on George F. Walker’s Nothing Sacred, an adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s novel from 1862. Walker, Canadian taxi driver turned incendiary playwright, is not one to be pigeonholed, and nothing bespeaks this fact like the current offering, a tragi-comic Russian study of generation gaps and social revolution.
The central figure of the story is Yevgeny Bazarov, medical student and nihilist, played with ample quantities of supercilious arrogance by Jon Townson, who brings a whiff of Kevin Kline to the role. Bazarov befriends Arkady (Patrick Flannery), son of Nikolai Kirsanov (amiable Charles St. Charles), a freedman on whose farm most of the action takes place. Arkady, newly graduated from university and still somewhat impressionable, is seeking a path through life different from that of his father and his Europe-infatuated uncle Pavel (Dave Bobb). Unfolding events lead to declarations of love inappropriate, foolish gestures in defense of honor, much fumbling and fighting (most of it in the moonlight), and a death by stupid accident.
Among the supporting cast, Scott Zeigler makes his mark as Viktor Sitnikov, a fawning innkeeper’s son and friend to Arkady and Yevgeny with a keening laugh, maybe the most annoying sound in literature; and Cliff Williams III as Sergei, bodyguard to the widow Anna Odintsova (Kelley Slagle)—Sergei is a Clydesdale of a man with a comic susceptibility to folk tales of wood demons.
Director Robb Hunter keeps the action moving at a good clip, but sometimes doesn’t allow moments the time they need. For instance, Nikolai’s hesitations and self-interruptions seem forced and unmotivated. On the other hand, Hunter’s device of using title cards to help us keep track of scenes is well-handled (and indispensable in the modest playing area at Theatre on the Run) and is nicely reprised at the curtain call.
- Nothing Sacred, by George F. Walker, adaption of Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, directed by Robb Hunter, Firebelly Productions, Arlington, Virginia